Computer Service and Repair

Email scams

A friend received an email claiming to be from healthcare.gov saying they saw she was having issues getting signed up and to click a link (of course) so they can help her finish. I imagine with all the issues healthcare.gov has had an email like this will seem legitimate to a LOT of people. The links all go to some web site called govdelivery.com.

While this appears to be a legitimate company I can find no reference to anything stating they are legitimately helping people having issues with healthcare.gov. They seem to be a marketing firm just trying to acquire information on people as opposed to actually being contracted by the government to help you with healthcare.gov issues. I would be inclined to tell you not to click any of those links or even call the number.

healthcare.gov has help links and help phone numbers all over it if you need help.

So yeah, the Affordable Care Act gets implemented and within days emails start getting sent out either being for it or against it and providing links to sites that support these views. Also, emails for surveys are getting sent out, again, both for and against. Unsurprisingly most of these emails are fake and the links go to the usual sites that install malware on your computers.

These emails make use of the passions people are feeling now. It’s basically an email version of “Like this if you hate/love Obama care!” and in the heat of the moment passion people are going to click those links …… and then be infected.

Received an email today that I had received an eFax and to click the link to read it. The link does not go to eFax (surprise!) but instead downloads a zip file that contains a program the most likely does not so nice things to your computer.

I received this email today. The subject says “Is this for real?” Well, no, it’s not for real. But they really want you to think it is. The email talks about some vague “bad things” about you being reported on a web site and encourages you to click a link to find out what it is. They also provide this ominous warning: “FOREWARNING: By not doing anything about this, you risk good friends and loving family discovering things you never wanted them them see”. All the links go to the same site that undoubtedly installs some malware or spyware on your computer.

Yet another email scam. This one claims that you have failed to respond to requests for more information on a credit card dispute. They of course provide a link to all the information about this dispute which actually take you to their own web site so they can infect your computer.

Anyone that did happen to have a dispute going on would probably click the link without hesitation and the odds are they are going to hit thousands of people with disputes with this mass mailing. Even those who don’t have any credit card disputes going on would be curious and probably click the link.

This must be Summer email scam week. I received 2 more scams today. One, another Facebook scam and the other from ADP security, a home security system company.

Of course neither are from who they say they are but are convincing enough to get unsuspecting people to click their links.

The Facebook email says some person I have never heard of has done a friend request. Of course every link in the email goes to some non-Facebook web site.

The ADP Security email talks about changing their web site and their way of communicating with your security system. This would be ineffective for anyone not an ADP customer, but any ADP customer would be inclined to click the links in the email which of course do not go to ADP but to some other site.

If you hover your cursor over these links before clicking you can see that they aren’t links to what they say they are.

I received an email today that looked like it was from Facebook that said someone requested a password change. It looked legit. However all the links in the email pointed to a site that was clearly NOT Facebook and would most likely infect you with something.

The really clever/bad thing about the email links is that there was one that said “If you didn’t request a new password, let us know immediately”. People receiving this email and believing it was from Facebook would most likely click this link and suffer the consequences.

USPS email scam this time. Talks about trying to deliver an item and failed due to bad zip code and that it will be returned unless I pick it up. There is of course an attachment they want to you run to print a “label” so you can pick up this “package” that contains an executable file that will undoubtedly infect you with something nasty.

The rate of fake emails intended to sucker me in to clicking links that would infect my computer or having attachments that do the same has picked up considerably recently. I am now receiving 3-4 emails a day of this nature.

It’s pointless to try to list each individual scam as there are now so many. Bank transfers gone awry. Shipment delivery fails. Fake government notifications.

You should be suspicious of any email that wants you to click a link or open an attachment, no matter who it is from.

It would seem most people are indeed being suspicious as I don’t get many calls for malware/virus infections these days, but I feel I must keep reminding people to remain vigilant. These attack attempts aren’t going away any time soon and tend to get better as time goes on.

Today I received an email from “Verizon” about my account. I don’t have an account with Verizon so I knew this was a scam.

All the links point to a web site that is definitely not Verizon and directly opens up some HTML code. I can see someone who DOES have a Verizon account blindly clicking one of the links and getting infected.

It’s getting so you can’t trust any email that looks like it’s from a major corporation.